2018 Brazilian Grand Prix - Interlagos, 9-11 November

[GPR-A]

It's called dangerous driving!
Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Lewis would have been burning up the radio cursing Sirotkin and yelling at the team to talk to Charlie.

Remember 2016 Suzuka? Max did his Verstappen thing of breaking under moving that forced Lewis to take escape route while he was chasing Nico. The team wanted to lodge a complaint against Max but Lewis asked not to do so. Again in Singapore this year, the battling Sirotkin, Grosjean and Perez almost costed Lewis his position as Max came close to overtaking, there too, it was a simple displeasure and nothing dramatic.

[NL_Fer]

Vettel destroying the weight-measuring equipment:

https://twitter.com/FedeCallizo/status/ ... 7482683392

In another movie you can actually hear Vettel turn off his engine. Then after the FIA was finished, he restarted again by himself and drive off. Looks like Ferrari has engine starting working now.

[McMrocks]

Measuring the car weight at a climb isn't the smartest idea they've had i think. Also weight distribution between front and rear (which is limited by the rules) can't be measured at a climb.

[NathanOlder]

Wouldn't be the first time he was confused. I mean in Baku last year he forgot to steer away from the 44.

Vettel is broken. The question is, can he be fixed ?

This comment is so funny on so many levels that I actually needed to laugh. Thank you!

No worries. Glad I helped a fellow F1 fan in need.

[falonso81]

Measuring the car weight at a climb isn't the smartest idea they've had i think. Also weight distribution between front and rear (which is limited by the rules) can't be measured at a climb.

Saw that too. They should have chosen a better place to set their scales. It all looks amateurish and badly organized.
"Oh hey lets put the scales here. If we tell a driver to stop his car and engine, surely 2 of us can hold the car from going backwards down the pitlane."

Vettel even did them a favour by getting on and off the scales by his own.

[iotar__]

Once again Vettel is commited to his "small" mistakes cost the championship challenge bit .

Luckily FIA are also commited to their openly cheating bit. Whiting would be uncompromisingly penalising if it weren't Hamilton and Vettel.

Race thread is commited to:
A. Throw a bone to honesty, it's Ok to penalise Hamilton when championship is decided. Not ok if it's not, like no penalty for blocking in GB '17.
B. It's a bad rule if Ferrrari driver breaks it, like red flags in Mexico .
bits.

[Juzh]

pole lap with telemetry
https://streamable.com/rg8go



vettel p2 lap
https://streamable.com/brkxt


Ferrari had practicaly no meaningful advantage on the straights in Q3. This points to the obvious, mercedes runs much more detuned in FP3, making ferrari look good. This happened a quite a few times now.
Ferrari even got up to 339 kmh over the line in FP3, yet in Q3 only about 332 kmh..

[i70q7m7ghw]

It's called dangerous driving!
Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Lewis would have been burning up the radio cursing Sirotkin and yelling at the team to talk to Charlie.

In racing conditions, absolutely, but in qualifying there's an expectation cars on their out/in laps will be travelling slower. Drivers are kept up to date by the teams about cars on their hot laps, but they wouldn't expect someone on an out/in lap to be doing qualifying speeds. It was 100% accidental, why would Hamilton risk damage to his car by doing this in purpose? He didn't even know who it was. Sensationalise this all you like, the FIA didn't even deem it worthy of an investigation.

The real problem here is the rule for blocking a hot lap, it's so easy to do by accident it's borderline unfair, and the reason Hamilton tried to dive off the racing line was because he was trying to *avoid* a penalty. I guess without it we could see people intentially trying to block people's laps which then becomes unsporting.

[Sierra117]

The Ferrari sounds the most electronic of all the cars. The engine's own sound is almost completely drowned out, either by volume or by the harmony of the whining and revving notes.

[i70q7m7ghw]

Measuring the car weight at a climb isn't the smartest idea they've had i think. Also weight distribution between front and rear (which is limited by the rules) can't be measured at a climb.

Saw that too. They should have chosen a better place to set their scales. It all looks amateurish and badly organized.
"Oh hey lets put the scales here. If we tell a driver to stop his car and engine, surely 2 of us can hold the car from going backwards down the pitlane."

Vettel even did them a favour by getting on and off the scales by his own.

Plenty of other cars have be on the scales this weekend without issue. I don't think he did anyone any favours after seeing what he did to the scales, what if they hit someone? Wreckless if you ask me.

This setup looks quite new, normally the cars are pushed in to a garage with a ramp & scales setup, the ones you normally see at the end of qualifying when the drivers weigh themselves. Maybe they should go back to that if drivers are going to pull this kind of stunt.

[Sierra117]

I personally think it's a bad idea in terms of overall "how things should be done". You have cars going around at extreme speeds, drivers at their most focussed and "primal", if you will. Asking them to then get into something that requires complete control of oneself at random and in the middle of the event, what do you expect? Of course participants will lose their composure. They're human beings, not robots.

It's akin to having drug testing right in-between rounds in a boxing fight.

[zac510]

This setup looks quite new, normally the cars are pushed in to a garage with a ramp & scales setup, the ones you normally see at the end of qualifying when the drivers weigh themselves. Maybe they should go back to that if drivers are going to pull this kind of stunt.

Those are the pre-event scrutineering scales, they're not the same thing.

[yelistener]

pole lap with telemetry
https://streamable.com/rg8go
https://streamable.com/rg8go


vettel p2 lap
https://streamable.com/brkxt
https://streamable.com/brkxt

Ferrari had practicaly no meaningful advantage on the straights in Q3. This points to the obvious, mercedes runs much more detuned in FP3, making ferrari look good. This happened a quite a few times now.
Ferrari even got up to 339 kmh over the line in FP3, yet in Q3 only about 332 kmh..

I think in 2018 cars sometimes hit higher top speed in FP than in quali (not including quali in wet). It's just an impression of mine and I don't want to go through all the docs from FIA.com, but I think it did happen quite a lot of times.

And I remember from last year's Brazil onboard Massa hit over 340kph in FP and yet was nowhere near that figure in quali. They must have different ERS deployment during FP and quali. So overal I think it's not that surprising to see Ferrari(or any other car) had higher top speed in FP.

[jjn9128]

This setup looks quite new, normally the cars are pushed in to a garage with a ramp & scales setup, the ones you normally see at the end of qualifying when the drivers weigh themselves. Maybe they should go back to that if drivers are going to pull this kind of stunt.

Cars used to be wheeled into the FIA garage for weight measurements - ironically that was changed 4/5 years ago because it took "too long" during qualifying sessions. So they bring an extra set of wheel weights out into the pits for in session scrutineering. It's not a long process but under time pressure with a potential rain downpour coming it can feel like it's taking forever - especially as the FIA guys didn't seem to be in a hurry.

Measuring the car weight at a climb isn't the smartest idea they've had i think. Also weight distribution between front and rear (which is limited by the rules) can't be measured at a climb.

The car isn't weighed at a climb - the ramps get them up onto the wheel weights which are set level. The FIA get 4 individual corner masses which they sum for front/rear distribution and total.

[zac510]

I don't think we can blame the FIA here for doing the weighing procedure as they have done for years, but it has highlighted some places where they can improve the process in the future.

For example some better signage around the weigh station, a bit more urgency, and perhaps some staff/marshals on hand to push the cars on and off (where team members aren't present to do the job).